Family History News and Views from Lisa Louise Cooke, host of The Genealogy Gems Podcast at www.GenealogyGems.com

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Get Some Extra Help Finding Your Family in the 1940 Census

News Release – For Immediate Release: April 4, 2012
Santa Monica, CA. April 4, 2012: The 1940 Census has finally been released and you can now browse the images online. But the waiting’s not over, since you still won’t be able to search the whole census by person until it’s fully indexed in several months.

Help, however, is at hand. Findmypast.com has come up with a way to make your search quicker and simpler – by offering to do the searching for you.

Findmypast.com is the new U.S. addition to the global network of findmypast family history websites, launched in a limited, early form in time for the 1940 Census. Its unique new, customized feature, created for the 1940 Census, is called “We’ll find them for you” and is now live.

All you have to do is to visit findmypast.com, submit the name of the person you’re searching for, plus some extra clues, and findmypast.com will email you as soon as the person’s records become available.

“We’re taking the hassle and delay out of searching”, says Brian Speckart, marketing manager of findmypast.com. “With this new feature, findmypast.com is going the extra mile to help you find your past as quickly and easily as possible.”

While the whole census won’t be searchable for several months, the records of individual U.S. states will be made searchable earlier, one state at a time. A couple of them are likely to be done by mid-April.

Some genealogy sites are offering to alert users simply when a particular state has been indexed. “But we’re going further and finding the particular individual you’re looking for”, says Speckart.

You have to tell findmypast.com in which state the person was living at the time of the 1940 Census. “As soon as that state is indexed, we run a program against the data to find the individual you’re looking for you and then email you the links we find”, says Speckart.

The job of indexing states one by one is being done by an army of volunteers under the banner of the 1940 Community Project, of which findmypast.com is a proud member.

Visitors to findmypast.com will be able to use the site’s new “We’ll find them for you” feature to submit details of the person they want to find.

Supplying the person’s first and last name and state where they were living in 1940 is all that’s required but providing additional clues will help findmypast.com narrow down the search results. Other helpful information includes approximate year of birth, likely birth city, place of residence in 1940 and names of other household members.

The new service isn’t just limited to family members either. Users can submit details of celebrities or other public figures and ask findmypast.com to find them too.
“So, if you happen to know that Marilyn Monroe’s real name was Norma Jean and which state she called home in 1940, we’ll find her for you too”, says Speckart.